Josh Brown and Pam Norgustin of Warren J. Nordin & Son painting company strip thick layers of paint from the cannon on the hill on July 25, 2018. The cannon is being stripped down to the base for the first time in decades. (Alonso Nichols/Tufts University)

A decades-old Tufts University tradition of students painting messages of encouragement, resistance, love and celebration on a historic cannon located on campus just got a refresh. Thousands of layers of paint – weighing 2,000 pounds – were removed from the cannon to stabilize the fixture and allow for new generations of Jumbos to enjoy.

For years, tradition has dictated that the cannon must be painted under cover of darkness. Students who paint the cannon are then tasked with guarding their work until dawn to make sure their message is not painted over during the night.

Crews worked for six weeks to remove the paint, starting in early July and working through sweltering heat. The paint’s thickness initially resisted sandblasting and had to be stripped manually.  The paint removed from the cannon filled a 12-foot box truck three times over.

The three-inch think layers of paint taken from the cannon resemble rings of a tree trunk, and mark history and time in a similar way.

“It really needed a cleaning,” said Ken Person, director of building operations at Tufts. “It just had paint on top of paint. It was time, and we had some concerns about the stability of the base. I’m glad. We have to take care of our Tufts traditions.”

The messages stripped from the cannon this summer included notes of encouragement to Jumbo athletic teams, inside jokes, commencement celebrations, reminders to vote in elections, birthday greetings, messages of protest, commemorations of global and personal tragedies, and best wishes to Tufts couples getting married at the campus’ nearby chapel.

To complete the restoration, the cannon was sandblasted once all the layers of latex paint were removed. Frequent campus landscaper Your Space helped move the cannon to Mass Green Blast, where it was sandblasted and then primed. The fully-restored cannon was lifted back into place shortly before fall classes began. It has already been painted by students a number of times.

Historic records suggest that the tradition of painting the cannon began as part of a campus protest. During the fall semester of 1977, the cannon was painted to oppose the controversial visit and conferral of an honorary degree on Imelda Marcos of the Philippines. It was quickly repainted by a student who objected to its defacing.

Since then, it has been painted nearly every night for four decades. The Tufts cannon once even had its own Instagram account documenting its changing paint jobs.

More information about unusual Tufts traditions can be found at https://admissions.tufts.edu/about-tufts/tufts-traditions/.